AEK http://www.aek.com/ is the third most popular football (soccer) team in Greece. Previous owners (one of them a verified gangster and ex-convict) have left the team with a huge debt. The only realistic option AEK now has, is to file for bankruptcy.
However, they won’t do that. They have contacted the prime minister and they are seeking financial aid from the state and/or to make some special law to waive their debts. They claim that AEK is very popular and many people will be dissapointed if it goes bankrupt.
My questions are:
Is the state obliged to help AEK (or any other football club) simply because it is popular?
I don’t know how this matter will turn out, but can football clubs in other countries exert that kind of leverage to the government?
Tricky one this. On one hand, one wouldn’t expect help to bail out most businesses. On the other hand, there is certainly scope for suggesting that established football clubs have a cultural and community aspect which might make them a special case like, say, museums or sporting academies.
Ultimately, bankruptcy and receivership are not the end of the world. Even in the worst case scenario, the stadium and players are sold and the team relocates, perhaps dropping a division or merging with another.
Olympiakos United? For the fans, unthinkable. For the taxpayers, eminently reasonable.
It’s long been the practice in the US that cities/counties or states helped financially the cost of stadiums for big league baseball and football.
Everything worked fine for a while as the leagues expanded into other large cities. The expansions have now reached into towns with insufficient fans to support the teams.
We now have cases that two or more cities each have a stadium to pay for and try to outbid each other to retain or obtain the team but neither really have enough fans. It’s a question of further subsidies with a team or even higher costs without one.